Never Mind The Facts, Let’s Pass Gun Laws

CHICAGO — Not a single gun shop can be found in this city because they are outlawed. Handguns were banned in Chicago for decades, too, until 2010, when the United States Supreme Court ruled that was going too far, leading city leaders to settle for restrictions some describe as the closest they could get legally to a ban without a ban. Despite a continuing legal fight, Illinois remains the only state in the nation with no provision to let private citizens carry guns in public.

And yet Chicago, a city with no civilian gun ranges and bans on both assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, finds itself laboring to stem a flood of gun violence that contributed to more than 500 homicides last year and at least 40 killings already in 2013, including a fatal shooting of a 15-year-old girl on Tuesday.

To gun rights advocates, the city provides stark evidence that even some of the toughest restrictions fail to make places safer. “The gun laws in Chicago only restrict the law-abiding citizens and they’ve essentially made the citizens prey,” said Richard A. Pearson, executive director of the Illinois State Rifle Association. To gun control proponents, the struggles here underscore the opposite — a need for strict, uniform national gun laws to eliminate the current patchwork of state and local rules that allow guns to flow into this city from outside.

So, because strict gun laws have done nothing to stem the tide of homicidal violence in Chicago, this only proves that the entire nation must be put under a ban, even those people — the vast majority of gun owners — who use guns responsibly, as is their Second Amendment right? Really?

I don’t care for the NRA’s absolutism. I have no problem in principle with gun regulations, up to a point (e.g., I would favor, for example, laws banning guns for felons and the mentally ill, banning gun shows, banning large-capacity clips). But the zealous ideological purity with which gun control proponents treat gun bans makes no sense to me. I’ve lived much of my life in East Coast cities, and the absolute freakout many middle-class, educated Easterners have about guns is, to me, inexplicable. Europeans are the same way. I mentioned on this blog how unnerved a French couple visiting me in St. Francisville was to learn that I had two guns in the house. If I had told them I had king cobras resting in the closet, they would scarcely have been less frightened.

Today there will be a hearing in Congress about gun control. Again, I am not opposed to having this conversation, and I cringe in advance of expecting the NRA’s representative saying something stupid, e.g., we should put armed guards in every school. Still, I also cringe to think about how the debate will be driven by emotion. Don’t you care about the Sandy Hook victims? and so forth.

Never mind that the Sandy Hook shooter used guns that had been legally obtained under strict gun control laws. Never mind that he could have killed as many children with pistols as with his “assault rifle.”

Never mind that according to a survey cited by the Justice Department, 80 percent of inmates imprisoned for a crime involving a gun say they got the gun through family, friends, or illegal means (which is to say, they didn’t go through the channels that would have allowed gun control to prevent them from obtaining the weapon).

This week, claims that no assault rifle was used in the course of the killings at Sandy Hook began to circulate anew when a gun rights page on Facebook with many followers circulated a video posted by MSNBC that clearly stated Lanza did not use an assault rifle in the Newtown school shooting.

The clip stating the Sandy Hook shooter’s assault rifle was in the trunk went viral again, with many re-posters claiming that the clip was definitive proof the “official narrative” had been wrong, and that Lanza’s spree was carried out with no assault rifle used.

The catch? The clip regarding Lanza’s assault rifle was dated December 15 — recorded ahead even of the press conference with Dr. Wayne Carver, the medical examiner who autopsied the Newtown victims.”

[And:]

While Vance and his officers have released little to the press about the details of the murders, he did clarify the rumor that no assault rifle was used in the Sandy Hook shootings. Vance began:

“It’s all these conspiracy theorists that are trying to mucky up the waters … There’s no doubt that the rifle was used solely to kill 26 people in that school.”

The Connecticut State Police spokesman added that regardless of the common misassumption that because an assault rifle was found in the trunk that Lanza did not use one in the spree, he has actually noted numerous times that all victims at Sandy Hook Elementary were killed with an assault weapon. . . ”

[And:]

Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal also addressed the rumors Thursday, saying that there is no doubt an assault weapon was the one used by Lanza, and he commented:

“There’s no question that the AR-15 was used, the Bushmaster shot those children with multiple rounds and was instrumental in the massacre. Those children and educators might well be alive today if not for the assault weapon and high-capacity magazines.”

Blumenthal clarifies:

“The shotgun was in the trunk of the car … The Bushmaster and two pistols were brought into the schoolhouse.”

Despite the ongoing corrections, the belief Lanza did not use the Bushmaster in his attack continues to permeate pro-gun corners of the web.

“I find that what animates the Left nowadays is not so much the issues of gun control, gay rights, abortion, etc. as personal animus against their Other”

Classic projection. Fear of the Other runs throw virtually all of conservatism. Just look at Rod’s post. He’s actually in favor of certain gun control provisions, recognizes that the NRA is the main obstacle to such things becoming law…yet what gets him agitated is those darn liberals!

Steph: “It points out the obviously true fact that gun laws in Chicago are limited in their effectiveness by the fact that guns can easily be brought in from other areas and identifies this as a reason why national gun laws make sense.”

Flip side: local bans don’t make sense.

Steph: “It doesn’t say that national law should be a ban. Indeed, the scare tactic “oh, no, the liberals want to take away your guns” that the NRA uses to oppose ANY regulations, ought to be put away given that we all know that a ban would be unconstitutional. Plus, it obviously could not be passed. It’s a total straw man.”

Pick your favorite scare tactic. The one you described, or “think of the children, we must do something!!!!” I favor whatever option increases the ability of individuals to exercise their rights. I wonder if folks who think we must do SOMETHING about gun violence are the same ones who approved of the the Fed’s other intrusions to increase security (TSA, Patriot Act, etc.)? I actually suspect not, but I am curious.

Ronan: “Isn’t this a reason to ban semi-automatic pistols as well? Why would anyone need to own such weapons except for law enforcement and civilians who have a) a professional need for such weapons (bodyguards, high-end security guards, etc), b) pass stringent SWAT-level training regimes, c) complete X hours of SWAT-level training per year to maintain skill levels, d) have a clean criminal record, e) pass mental health checks every two years, and f) keep the guns under lock and key with the ammo stored separately.”

I’ll answer a) and f): a) because when you’re in a self-defense situation, you might need to fire multiple, maybe even many, rounds rapidly. f) this makes the gun mostly useless for any self-defense situation.

Engineer Scotty: “Handguns are extremely useful for personal protection in close quarters. However, that application doesn’t require features like detachable magazines (let along high-capacity ones)–even though the Sandy Hook killer may have not fired his Bushmaster, the handguns he did use were all in the “mayhem” category, designed to allow the user to get off a large number of shots, quickly reload, and keep shooting.”

If someone comes after you with a “mayhem” gun they obtained illegally or already had before any type of ban was enacted, you would be fine with only having say, 7 rounds from a revolver at your disposal?

I’ve lived much of my life in East Coast cities, and the absolute freakout many middle-class, educated Easterners have about guns is, to me, inexplicable. Europeans are the same way. I mentioned on this blog how unnerved a French couple visiting me in St. Francisville was to learn that I had two guns in the house. If I had told them I had king cobras resting in the closet, they would scarcely have been less frightened.

You have to grow up in civilization to understand the attitude, Rod. You’re member of a settler society that imitates civilization, and I suspect a lot of the upset you’re seeing is not so much the armament but people realizing you had fooled them into believing you a member of their tribe.

I don’t see why Chicago is used as a failure of gun control. Looking at the long-term homicide rate in Chicago, the number of deaths and deaths by gun has been steadily dropping since the mid-70s. It’s had a modest uptick the past few years, but is nothing close to what it was in the fairly recent past.

And the RATE–deaths normalized for population–in Chicago is roughly that of Phoenix AZ and Pittsburg PA (based on the most recent statistics I could find, showing top 50 metro areas in the US. And the rate of gun deaths in Chicago fallls well below that of a number of other cities.) I fail to see where Chicago represents an unmitigated failure of gun control because of a huge surge in gun deaths, either in gross numbers or adjusted for population.

Josh McGee–I certainly agree with you on the fallacy of “but if it saves one more life…” But does that mean that NO regulation can met any reasonable cost/benefit test, ever? That we must accept the current number/frequency/type of gun deaths as an unfortunate feature of our political/social system, unchanged forever? That, for instance, limiting the size of semi-automatic pistol magazines to 7-10 rounds will not, at the cost of a modest imposition on owners, reduce the number of people killed in our bi-weekly mass murders?

Diane Feinstein — famed advocate of gun control — witnessed the murder of Harvey Milk and George Mosconi.

She did not personally witness the murders. And, IIRC, her advocacy for gun control came after the mass shooting at 101 California St. (at a law office in the tower at that address in SF). She opposes assault weapons, which were used in the mass shooting. She doesn’t oppose hand guns, which is what Dan White used to kill Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Milk. Besides, most gun-control laws make exceptions for former police, firefighters, and other public safety folks like Dan White.

I think there’s a lot to be said for the “gun culture” argument. A lot of people who grow up with no exposure to guns find them viscerally scary and off-putting, while those who grow up around guns tend to treat them as tools to be handled with respect won through experience. A lot of the tribalism “fear of the Other” plays here, and as a good chunk of the chattering classes that have been talking about the issue don’t come from a gun culture, their ignorance about the basic nature and working/terminology of many guns is just enforcing the same tribal backlash and paranoia from the NRA supporters. I saw at least one pundit refer to the AR-15 as a “semi-automatic machine gun,” which is either a flat contradiction in terms, or a definition so wide as to be meaningless. It would put your classic Boy Scout .22 Remington in the same class as a M-2 HB .50 caliber machine gun used by the military. Breathless accounts of how fast the Bushmaster can fire don’t say anything meaningful about how the weapon can be practically used (firing really fast often means you miss with more shots, unless you’re really well trained. The Army abandoned full auto M-16s after Vietnam for a while, because they found they found it often wasted ammunition).

“High-capacity” magazines are tricky, and the case for banning them isn’t so clear cut. I’ve been shooting with a family friend a few times, a retired Cop who also worked as a gunsmith for the force, and received a lot of tactical training. His shooting philosophy was that you want as large a magazine as you can possibly have, because you should train for the worst case scenario, and because a real shooting environment isn’t like the movies where one precise shot can bring down the bad guy. If you’re in a life or death situation, you aim for center mass and keep shooting, because a single bullet won’t always bring the target down (especially with the surprisingly small rounds in 9 many handguns, or the .223 used by the Bushmaster). This was a guy who obviously knew how to shoot accurately and professionally under stressful situations. I don’t think that that necessarily means we can’t or shouldn’t restrict high-capacity magazines, but people should realize that there are serious reasons why someone would practically want to have access to them.

I think there can be good arguments for certain types of restrictions (background checks, felons, the gun show loophole, etc), but absolute pro-gun crowd is digging in its heels and not budging an inch because they justifiably feel that many of the people talking about gun legislation have no idea what they’re talking about. It’s like someone who’s never been in a kitchen their whole life trying to tell an experienced chef what knives and cooking pans he can use.

This is one of those posts where everyone chimes in FAST, and just about every opinion — fragmented all over the map — becomes lost in the general babble.

But, for what its worth, the “absolute freakout” that some people have about guns is unworthy of becoming a national standard. We have far too much one size fits all standards as it is. If I were subject to a home invasion, I would prefer not to be confronted with fully automatic weapons. I would also prefer to have effective means to shoot back, and preferably, shoot first. I don’t currently own any guns — haven’t actually handled any since Boy Scouts and YMCA summer camps, and my target scores weren’t good enough for a riflery merit badge. But I definitely appreciate that I can get one if I need one, and yes, I would take a refresher course in how to use (and clean) one properly.

If anyone is motivated to exercise great care, it is possible we could come up with sensible policies that significantly decrease gun violence, leave citizens reasonably safe, and comply with the Second Amendment. Free speech is subject to viewpoint-neutral time, place and manner regulation, and limits on, e.g., spewing your views from a loudspeaker at midnight in a residential neighborhood. Perhaps in crowded urban environments, it would be better if people didn’t actually carry loaded weapons on the street, and if having one were cause for police to stop a person and investigate. Even 100 miles away, that might not be helpful or a good idea at all.

One of the most “Left” people I have known in my 50+ years was a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association. Could we please stop mistaking upscale yuppies for the workers of the world? They might have flirted with being “left” for a couple of years in college, but since then, they’ve been building very nice bourgeois careers for themselves. I’m not even saying that’s a bad thing, but its not “Left.” The original Populists were a “Left” movement, closely allied to the socialists — both of whom practices the right to keep and bear arms, without actually engaging in armed uprising, except for the Green Corn Rebellion in that quintessential “Red” state, Oklahoma.

Update to liberals (not the same thing as libertarians, socialists, or radicals), let’s not forget “Restricting Handguns: The Liberal Skeptics Speak Out,” with a foreward by that stalwart upholder of the Second Amendment, Senator Frank Church of Idaho. Featured observation: If a carload of KKK members knows you have a gun, they will leave you alone. If they think you are unarmed, the cowards will be on you in no time.

These people literally believe that if people carried guns, they would shoot each other over minor disagreements in the popcorn line at the movie theater.

Well, there is SOMEthing to that. Many adults have commented in the last twenty years that when they were coming up, disputes were settled with fist fights, but now, teens and young adults in rough communities go right for their guns, or, the loser of a fist fight comes back with a gun. Is this because nobody HAD guns in “the good old days”? Not hardly. But maybe its easier to get your hands on one now.

seems to me that if a citizen joins the armed forces; active duty or reserves/National Guard (essentially a “militia”); he/she should be able to purchase/own an “assualt rifle” or battlefied firearm

Timothy McVeigh was a veteran, honorably discharged too as far as I recall. That doesn’t mean veterans should be banned from owning firearms. It does mean, IF there are controls on owning firearms, the blanket exception proposed in the above words is not particularly sensible.

Gun buyback programs… tend to be plagued with gun owners who sell their older models for an attractive price, which they use for a down payment on a much better model…

it is morally and politically untenable to say that our children are being slaughtered, but we don’t know what to do about it…

It is equally untenable to say “so we will implement far-reaching measures that we don’t know will improve matters,” as it is to say “so we will do nothing.”

So, what ARE we going to do? It would be better to evaluate the individual proposals on the table, as Al did, than to rant about the motives and attitudes of sections of the chattering classes.

One of the things that mystifies me is that in our discussion about gun violence in Chicago we never give a serious look at “the war on drugs” and the ramifications thereof. I hope we do.

One of the warnings that frequently comes up in our community policing meeting is: be vigilant–a large number of bangers is being released from prison this month. We residents of Uptown, Andersonville, Edgewater and Rogers Park know what that means.

Shooting wars over drug corners. I’ve witnessed two. My daughter and I got to see one together. That was fun!

I don’t pretend to know the opinion of all Chicago cops, but the ones I do know remind me of the guys on ‘The Wire.’ The whole thing seems a cynical game. Politicians trumpet the latest “huge drug bust.” (the equivalent of “we killed Al Qaeda’s #2 today!) The narcs put a couple of teenagers in the back of a squad car. And, we’re supposed to think that things are improving. They’re not.

The bangers (the people doing most of the killing and dying in Chicago) clearly have the upper hand as long as there’s a demand for drugs and they’re granted the de facto monopoly of distribution rights.

I don’t think the legalization of some drugs is the antidote to all gun violence, but I do think that enacting policies that steer huge piles of cash into the hands of the most nihilistic and murderous elements of our society is nuts.

Why are people in big cities afraid of guns? Because people with guns keep using them to shoot people. It’s not really all that complicated.

Mrs. Lanza had a well stocked armory which, if reports are correct, she amassed for the specific purpose of shooting people. Whether she inculcated in her son the belief that the need to shoot lots of people was not only foreseeable, but likely enough to justify the accumulation of her arsenal, we’ll never know. But the fact remains that her arsenal was not used to stave off a post-apocalyptic invasion from New York City, but for another purpose altogether.

It seems to me that the ‘move along, nothing to see here’ crowd doesn’t have much business lecturing folks about facts.

I am unsettled by the prospect of militarizing the schools. I felt the NRA’s proposal was tone deaf (and I’m a member).

But the reality is that kids are sitting ducks until the police arrive in these situations, and it amounts to willful defenselessness. A shooter has free reign, and they could kill a lot of people with an antique revolver in that two minute window. I read a newspaper article recently in which the stated security plan was to have the kids throw their books and belongings at the shooter. Pathetic.

Let willing teachers and administrators conceal carry. It works, and the kids don’t even have to know guns are present.

What’s that even mean? What’s a gun show? If I have a gun to sell and you come to my house ot buy it, is that a gun show? What if me and my brother are there, and you and your brother come to buy a gun from each of us?

Just curious as to what you are getting at here. I don’t know that I will ever have any desire to go to a gun show. But what problem does banning them solve?

Re: no one has the authority to rule over his fellow man and tell him what he can and cannot own, where he can go and cannot go, determine what he can put into his bloodstream, inhale, etc. except: 1) parents; and 2) The Lord God almighty. and this is what our bill of rights is all about, telling govt that it cannot legislate in these areas.

Seriously?

I’m unaware of any place in the Bible, tradition, or any other Christian sources where they mention a natural right to self-defence. By contrast, both Jesus and St. Paul are pretty clear that governmental authority- including the authority to punish, coerce, and use force- is delegated by God. Some Christian thinkers also drew analogies between parental power and state power. There may or may not be a natural right of self-defence, but you’re going to have to look elsewhere besides Christianity to find it. And the argument that the state has no authority to control us for our own good, owes more to Enlightenment liberal thought than it does to Christianity.

I reject your litany of rhetorical “Neverminds,” and your preemptive cringing. I mean, really, what’s your point here? “Go go ahead and have your little conversation, but let’s not forget to be snide about people who were horrified by Sandy Hook and are motivated by that horror to take action?” Seriously, that’s the guy you wanna be?

(FWIW my deeply conservative, gun-owning Southern in-laws were horrified by Sandy Hook too, and are now in favor of stricter gun-control. Does that make them honorary irrational Europeans?)

Twenty first-graders were murdered in one day by a kid who had a LOT of guns close at hand, and some people think that it might be a good moment to review the role of guns in our culture? Oh, the irrationality of it all. These liberals and their crazy emotions…

Interesting the articles were Joe Biden does and doesn’t get mentioned. Interesting how the group who oppose the gun laws, the NRA, is mentioned critically while the people pushing these useless draconian laws are strangely anonymous. This post is so unpersuasive from the point of view that it pretends to support that a leftist like MBunge finds in it only more fuel for his dehumanizing protections of the right.

MBunge correctly points out that CDK believes liberals care more about tearing down their opponents than the actual issue while CDK derides those who have changed their minds on gay issues. As a twofer he puts marriage in quotes because he believes that gays can’t be married. Legally many gay couples are married and that’s not subject to his approval. It’s this sort of pettiness that poisons discourse.
cDK has every right to not agree with marriage equality but its childish to deny the reality of those marriages. Maybe his friends have found out that one of their kids is gay or maybe someone else they love;it’s not hard to imagine their opinion would change. Civility, common courtesy and not thinking the worst of one another can go a long way in reaching consensus on controversial issues, whether it’s guns or gay rights.

I think df’s questions are worthwhile. I, too, doubt the notion that the 2nd Amendment is meant to protect people from their own government. I think the Founders more likely had in mind protecting the people and the government against insurrectionists. In other words, against those who would use guns against the government, exactly as today’s 2nd Amendment absolutists claim is their right. (Isn’t this “right” moot, anyway? As if these self-proclaimed heroes of liberty could fight off government forces.)

df also refers to the strange cognitive dissonance apparent among the many who claim that the 2nd Amendment is there to allow them to protect themselves against the government, and yet who also support funding the military extravagantly and never cutting military funding.

J has a point, too, though I’m sure many here will find the bluntness with which it’s stated offensive. Rod’s attitude towards guns may be the norm in his area, but that doesn’t mean his East Coast and European friends’ abhorrence of them is like some kind of nervous disorder or baseless phobia.

I think that the utter saturation of our culture with guns–even if you factor out responsible ownership for sportsmen, against which I have no complaint–is a tragic marker of a lamentably failed civilization. Or, perhaps as J suggests, the mark of a settler society imitating civilization.

Is there some reason why so many people are in a rush to let the government decide who is mentally ill? Isn’t that encouraging thought control at some point? Of course the left loves this, because they consider being conservative a form of mental illness. No guns for you! Problem solved.

Siarlys Jenkins says: One of the most “Left” people I have known in my 50+ years was a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association. Could we please stop mistaking upscale yuppies for the workers of the world?

I think the easily-kerfuffled “upscale yuppies,” like the “ideological zealotry” (described by Rod) of those who might be interested in having a conversation about gun control, might be a fantasy. I’m a Democrat living in a city full of “upscale yuppies” and I know a TON of people who own guns–urban and rural, yuppie and nonyuppie. Some for sport or hunting, some as part of a collection of war memorabilia, some for self-protection. Most are Dems, a couple Repubs, none of them are that bent out of shape about the idea of not being able to buy assault rifles, or easily pick up a few more at a gun show, or the notion that there might be a registry. (Except for one crazy uncle who is actively preparing for the apocalypse.) I actually don’t know anyone who is in favor of a ban on all guns all the time…there may be a few token hippies out there (the counterpart to my uncle), but I believe the “I’m coming to take your guns!!!!” guy is clearly an NRA bogeyman.

Passing laws under emotional duress is dangerous at worst, and ineffective at best. The law must be dispassionate.

Whether anyone likes it or not, the facts are on the side of the NRA and those who favor carry laws and few restrictions on semiautomatic weapon types. That is a demonstrable fact. More guns = less crime. Gun laws aimed at lawful gun owners do not reduce crime, and even if we, like Britain, banned virtually all guns, you might suppress gun deaths but you’d see the same rise in violent crime that they did.

Call us what you like. Go ballistic. Knock yourselves out. Law abiding gun owners will not be scapegoats for insane killers or forfeit our rights in order to placate the unthinking fearful. You will find the American people to be rather unruly and uncooperative on this point.

“I ask, Sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people. To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them.”
George Mason, Co-author of the Second Amendment during Virginia’s Convention to Ratify the Constitution, 1788

df, yes, absolutely we should shrink the size of our military and just about every other part of government. A substantial reduction in the size of our military would somewhat lessen the advantage in brute force and weaponry that our federal government has over the American people — a result very much to be desired given the continuing growth in the size, intrusiveness, and brutality of the fed gov.

I have to agree with what Micheal said about guns being to gun control advocates, and many people simply not from gun friendly cultures, being analogous to marijauna or alchohol amongst Baptists (or many muslims btw). This includes the presumption of the substances’ magical ability to destroy the prudence and self restraint of the user.

Contrast that with the automobile. Even though we could easily reduce automobile deaths dramatically by reducing the speed limits and installing breathalizers in every car there really is no drive to do so. Cars are almost universal in American culture, so we accept 35 thousand autmobile deaths per year as if car crashes were natural disasters.

You are correct. It is horrible. It is also routine, because the criminals run wild in Chicago, unchallenged by commensurate force in the hands of their victims and with no fear that anything of substance will be done by the city. I’m sure they love it every time another year goes by while effete politicians come up with new and better ways to take guns out of the hands of common people. It’s utterly profane.

Libertarian Jerry makes the most seductive argument for gun rights. If I thought I could use a gun to enforce stricter banking regulations or overturn Citizens United, I’d buy one tomorrow morning!

Of course, if we could use guns to do stuff like that both parties would already have united to restrict them. The sad fact is that pretty much all we can do with guns is shoot things. And shooting enough people to protect oneself against a threatening government or its policies — well, that would turn you into a bigger threat, wouldn’t it? Your neighbors would immediately call on the government to protect them from you, and rightly so.

When I hear fantasies about standing up to the government, I’m afraid I don’t picture noble minutemen. I picture Afghani warlords.

FACT CHECK Rod: “Never mind that the assault rifle ban of the 1990s is widely believed to have been a failure.”

Widely believed does not make it a fact. Others widely believe the 1994 assault weapon ban was weak; adequate reliable statistics were/are not available.

If the assault weapon ban had continued, Lanza’s mother would not have owned assault weapons. Lanza could have used a handgun, but the number of killed childred would in all probability been much lower.

1 in 4 law enforcement individuals are killed with assault weapon. I do not know why anyone would want to put themselves in the much lower chance of survival because of assault weapons.

FactCheck.org

Conflicting and Reliability of Statistics/Studies

“There is work the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention could and should be doing, she said, but has not since the late 1990s. CDC has been wary of studying gun issues after NRA lobbyists convinced Congress to cut into its funding after a series of studies in the mid-1990s were viewed by the NRA as advocating for gun control.

What kind of study is CDC not doing? “The kind of information we need at the policy-making tables,” Sorenson said.””

IOWA SEN. CHARLES GRASSLEY, the top Republican on the committee: “The 1994 assault weapon ban did not stop Columbine. The Justice Department found the ban ineffective.”

THE FACTS: The 2004 study conducted for the Justice Department did not conclude the decade-old ban was a failure or a success. The nuanced report found that the effects of the ban “have yet to be fully realized” and it might take years to see results directly attributable to the prohibition on certain weapons and large capacity magazines. The ban expired later in 2004.

The study’s author, Christopher S. Koper, then of the University of Pennsylvania, considered the restrictions modest and speculated that they would have similarly measured results — perhaps as much as a 5 percent decline in gunshot victimization over time if the ban were kept in effect.

His main finding: There were not enough statistics and time to understand the impact of the ban and “it may take many years for the effects of modest, incremental policy changes to be fully felt, a reality that both researchers and policy makers should heed.”

The study made no recommendation whether the ban should be renewed. But it said that if the ban expired, it was “possible, and perhaps probable” that new assault weapons and large capacity magazines coming into the market “will eventually be used to commit mass murder.”

“I ask, Sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people. To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them.”
George Mason, Co-author of the Second Amendment during Virginia’s Convention to Ratify the Constitution, 1788

‘Whether anyone likes it or not, the facts are on the side of the NRA and those who favor carry laws and few restrictions on semiautomatic weapon types. That is a demonstrable fact. More guns = less crime. Gun laws aimed at lawful gun owners do not reduce crime, and even if we, like Britain, banned virtually all guns, you might suppress gun deaths but you’d see the same rise in violent crime that they did.’

This simply isn’t true. There is significantly less violent crime in the UK that America; fewer guns leads to – surprise, surprise – fewer gun deaths.

M. Worrell: Gun laws aimed at lawful gun owners do not reduce crime, and even if we, like Britain, banned virtually all guns, you might suppress gun deaths but you’d see the same rise in violent crime that they did.

Homicide rate in US: 4.8/100,000
Homicide rate in UK: 1.2/100,000

It is correct that the UK has more nonfatal assaults than the US, and more burglaries. Rates of rape and robbery are comparable.

I do not advocate banning virtually all guns but there is clearly a very substantial difference between the homicide rate in the US and the rates in countries that have much more gun regulation.

“Really? Well, we should throw in the towel, eh? Kind of like saying, “This river is far too polluted to do anything meaningful to clean it up.” Best to do nothing, then.

What a lazy, irresponsible position to take.”

Is it more responsible to enact a number of costly and likely ineffective measures? If we don’t do something, no matter how ineffective, it would be lazy. There is at least some evidence that pollution controls in this country can be effective. There is much less that gun control (especially in cities) has been effective.

For everybody that uses the UK as an example, there is the counter example of Brazil. I’ve also notice that often those that think gun control is only a matter of elbow grease are the same people that think border control is impossible or undesirable.

I have no particular affection for the gun lobby, and would be quite happy with European-style gun control, but I have to admit that it would have a comparatively small effect on gun violence here in the US, with all the guns we already have.

As I’ve said before, if we really want to reduce gun violence, there’s a pretty easy way to do it: stop the drug war. Legalize, decriminalize, and medicalize our drug problem. That won’t eliminate our gun violence, but it would massively reduce it. It would make a vast difference to our culture, especially inner city minority communities.

It’s the best counter-proposal conservatives who want to preserve their second Amendment rights could offer. Rod is always talking about making deals like this with the left. This is one I’d take in a heartbeat. We lift all gun restrictions (except on criminals and the mentally ill) and no future infringements on gun rights, in exchange for an end to the drug war. Deal?

Sexton Blake- as an American who grew up in Kansas and lived in the West for 20 years as an adult, I would say yes – many Americans believe that they are more free than Belgians or most other countries. I think I believed that, an unconscious learned assumption, until I lived in Australia for three years and was faced, on a daily basis, with the absurdity of a lot of those unconscious beliefs.

In the Kansas household I grew up in, there were many guns. We were a “responsible” gun owning family. We took the NRA safety courses, knew about proper weapon storage, and safe weapon handling. Of course, that did not stop my older brother from chasing my older sister down the street with a shotgun, while I ran to my neighbor’s crying to get my mother and stop any carnage before it happened. It didn’t mean that our gun cabinet was locked (it wasn’t) or that the ammo was stored separately (it was on a shelf under the one the guns rested on, in the stairwell gun cabinet my father designed and built). But we were always told the guns were loaded and not to touch them and that was safety enough for those days, I guess.

My second husband is from Wyoming, grew up in a hunting family, and has almost as many stories as close calls and gun mishaps as I do.

My first husband’s father committed suicide with a shotgun.

We won’t own a gun. Too many close calls, too many fights over who inherits what gun, and now, too much grappling with what does it mean to love your enemy? Even when your enemy is doing harm to you or your family.